WASHINGTON — Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson today used the growing border crisis to pressure House Republicans to pass the Senate immigration rewrite that is backed by President Obama.
He said that current immigration law is unstable because the GOP-majority House may approve the Senate’s complex bill, but that approval of the massive rewrite add extra resources “as well as stability in the law right now.”
“If Congress acts, I believe we would know our immigration law landscape for years, if not decades,” he said at an afternoon press conference.
Johnson made that claim even though current immigration law has been on the books for decades and the Senate’s huge bill would create sweeping changes in that law, changes that have yet to be tested in the courts.
He also used the conference to to deliver two additional conflicting messages to two other critical audiences.
He sought to reassure Americans who are worried about border security, but he also signaled support to a huge number of Latinos in Central America or in the United States who may want to send their children north in the hope they will be given permission to live in the United States.
Since 2012, Obama has relaxed immigration laws so much that a flood of youths and families from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador are crossing the border in the hope of winning the administration’s permission to stay.
Agency officials expect the flood of children and youths to reach 90,000 by October, and 140,000 in the following 12 months. The agencies have not released data about the number of additional adults who are bringing other children to the United States.
The flow of families and youths has grown rapidly, and media outlets are now saying that 1,000 people are crossing the border each day. If that rate continues, the combined inflow by October would exceed 150,000.
Almost one in five of the 28 million people living in the three Central American countries would like to migrate to the United States, according to a 2013 Gallup survey. That adds up to a potential inflow of five million people, assuming the flow is not augmented by roughly 130 million additional people in other countries that Gallup estimates wish to live in the United States.
The inflow will grow the nation’s labor supply, even though millions of older Americans have given up looking for work, and millions of younger Americans can’t get a decent job to start a family or buy a house.